Allissa

The longest night of my life had no end that I could find. It simply went on, hour after hour, in the cold ruin of my daughter’s bedroom, until the dark outside her window began to gray and I understood that the world intended to have a morning whether my child was in it or not.

We had not slept. There was no version of the night in which we slept.

I had spent it moving, because moving was the only thing that kept me from coming apart. I checked the twins until Hessa gently took my ...